Is Manulife Financial Corporation (USA) (MFC) A Good Stock To Buy?

We already know that not all hedge funds are bullish on the stock and some hedge funds actually dumped their positions entirely. Intriguingly, Robert B. Gillam’s McKinley Capital Management dumped the biggest position of the 700 funds watched by Insider Monkey, worth an estimated $21.5 million in stock, and Glenn Russell Dubin’s Highbridge Capital Management was right behind this move, as the fund dropped about $1 million worth of MFC shares.

Let’s now take a look at hedge fund activity in other stocks – not necessarily in the same industry as Manulife Financial Corporation (USA) (NYSE:MFC) but similarly valued. These stocks are PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG), Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN), Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (ADR) (NYSE:PHG), and Tyson Foods, Inc. (NYSE:TSN). This group of stocks’ market valuations resemble MFC’s market valuation.

As you can see these stocks had an average of 30 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1.17 billion. That figure was a meager $197 million in MFC’s case. Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALXN) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV (ADR) (NYSE:PHG) is the least popular one with only 10 bullish hedge fund positions. Manulife Financial Corporation (USA) (NYSE:MFC) is not the least popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still below average. This is a slightly negative signal and we’d rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. In this regard ALXN might be a better candidate to consider taking a long position in.

Disclosure: none.